


Cake

by AvalonRoot



Category: Original Work
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-19
Updated: 2021-03-19
Packaged: 2021-03-27 23:21:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30130443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AvalonRoot/pseuds/AvalonRoot
Summary: Cake Lindsey makes a fool of herself for love.





	Cake

“Name?”

Here it comes.

“Cake Lindsey.”

He looked up with a bemused expression on his face, like I had just told him that my boobs didn’t match. They don’t but that’s another story for another day.

“Is that C-A-K-E or did your mother have a flight of fancy and try thinking outside the box?”

I had an urge to drop my pants and shove my sweaty muff in his face and ask him if he liked his cake moist—

“Caaake, remember where we are. I’d rather not spend the day here if you don’t mind. You promised me lunch.”

Jannie’s whiny drawl brought me back from the edge.

She had probably guessed what I was thinking, and she was right. I really didn’t want to die on this hill.

“Pick your battles wisely Cake and you might live to see twenty-three,” Charlie said. It was her favorite expression.

Charlie had been right of course. Charlie was right more often than not, being a grizzled combat veteran of twenty-seven. She had seen a few things and had shared some of them with me. Yeah, she had shared her body with me too. That part had helped me determine what side of the fence I belonged on.

“Right you are, Jannie. You spelled it correctly, sir. My mother was thinking more about dessert than having a flight of fancy. She loved her desserts.”

She had also died giving birth to me. I had sworn that I wasn’t going to die that way. Since a man had never been invited to sample the abyss between my legs, I figured I’d be able to keep that oath.

He nodded and bent back to his task. The rest of the procedure proceeded without drama and I soon had a temporary driver’s license in my hand. The face staring back at me wasn’t the ugliest forty-year-old woman I’d ever seen, but at least I didn’t look like an axe murderer anymore.

“Not bad. It captures your inner light.”

“Well, my inner light must be coming from a tire fire then. Let’s go to the Rod and Gun. I need a drink.”

“That’s okay by me. I don’t have anywhere I need to be. Except lunch maybe.”

That was true enough since she never had anywhere she needed to be.

You’d think a place called the Rod and Gun would have some kind of hunting motif and it does, it just seems like an afterthought. The place had been started by a man named Rodney Gunn and he thought it had been a good way to get the locals to come into the place.

He had sold the place about ten years back and the current owner thought it was too much trouble to change it. Her name was Chastity although some of the old timers would drink a little too much and call her Chas-tittie. She usually let them sleep off the drunk snuggled in the trash bags out back. It didn’t help that her front porch needed extra supports to keep it plumb.

Cully usually took care of those details. I had often wondered what other details, personal or otherwise, that Cully took care of as well. He was ten years younger than Chastity but on balance I’d say he needed the extra energy to keep up with her.

I had always assumed that her relationship with Cully had precluded any kind of relationship with me since he had a cock and I didn’t, so I never made any moves on her. I contented myself with thinking about the two of us skinny dipping in Miller’s pond under a full moon as my hand roamed inside me on my sweat soaked bed.

Chastity was bringing some glasses from the back when we walked in. She smiled.

“Cake. Janelle. You’re in early today.”

“I’ve got three words to say. DMV.”

Chastity set the glasses on the bar with a thump and nodded.

“I understand. Who got the new license?”

I took it out and handed it to her. She made a face.

“It’s better than the last one,” she said handing it back to me.

“It’s better in the same way walking over hot coals is better than walking over broken glass,” I said.

She planted her hands on the bar.

“The first one is on me then. It’s the least I can do for people who have been through hell.”

“Thanks, Chastity.”

“Yeah, thanks,” Jannie echoed. Yeah, like Jannie ever paid for anything. Christ I was a bad mood. Where had that come from? My brand was on Jannie’s sweet ass so what did I expect her to do?

Chastity nodded and pulled our usual orders. Jannie excused herself to go pee. Chastity looked at me.

“Are you ever going to marry her?”

“Why buy the cow when the milk is free?”

She sighed. It wasn’t the first time she had asked me that question and it wasn’t the first time I had answered it that way.

“Listen, Chastity. I love Jannie and all, but I don’t think we’re that deeply connected. I’m afraid that the first time I got really sick or if I lost my job, well I’m afraid she’d ghost out on me.”

Chastity nodded.

“Janelle is a good kid, but I think you might be right. She’s still a kid. Not everybody can be Charlie.”

“She’s older than you.” I ignored the bit about Charlie.

Chastity rocked her hand in front of her.

“Physical age isn’t everything.”

It suddenly dawned on me that right now might be the perfect time to make some kind of statement that could either be taken seriously or could be viewed as a joke. If she took it seriously then she might start to look at me differently. If she took it as a joke, then there was no harm done.

The only problem was I wasn’t able to think of that clever line before Jannie came back and plopped her delicious hips down on the stool beside me.

“I see you’ve changed then air freshener in the lady’s bathroom.”

“Yeah, I’m trying something I read about in one of the trade magazines.”

“Are you going to put something nicer in the men’s bathroom?” I asked.

“Hell no. It would be a waste of money. I refuse to go in there. I make Cully clean it.”

“My God, he doesn’t clean the lady’s bathroom, does he?” asked Jannie.

“No. Why?”

“It would be too weird to think that a man had been in there touching all the stuff in there. What if he planted a camera somewhere?”

“Don’t worry about it. I’ve put cameras in both of them.” She paused. “For security purposes, but I only check them if I think something suspicious is going on. Keep it quiet that you know.”

“I’ll act suspicious the next time I have to go to the bathroom then,” I said.

They both laughed but I saw that Chastity was eyeing me in a way that made me uneasy. Great. I had finally managed to make my test statement and Chastity had come down on the third option, like a flipped coin that had somehow landed on its edge.

Chastity’s look nagged at me while I drove over to the buffet. What had it meant? Had I screwed up a relationship I valued? I pulled into a parking spot.

“Here? You dragged me through the DMV just to bring me here?”

I glanced over at her. Jannie’s eyes were not pretty.

“I thought you liked it here.”

“I do, but we come here all the time. When you said you were taking me out to lunch, well I thought, well I didn’t think we would end up here.”

I sighed. Chastity’s look was a thorn in my mind, and like any thorn or like food stuck in your teeth I continued to worry at it. I realized I had been doing that instead of listening to what Jannie was saying, or rather how she had been saying it.

“Look, sweet thighs, I guess my DMV experience soured me. If my mother had given me any other name, I would have used it, but I’m stuck with Cake.” I reached over and stroked her leg. “Where would you like to go?”

She smiled the smile that lit up my life and said, “Let’s go to the Silo.”

I smiled back at her. “The Silo it is then.” I started the car with reluctance and left the buffet behind.

Someone had had the bright idea of re purposing an old grain silo into a restaurant. They had put floors in and installed an elevator. There was a bar at the top.

As I had expected, it was crowded so I put my name down and we went up to the bar. I was beginning to fret about the amount of time I would be away from work. The time for DMV trip had been woefully underestimated.

“Do you see something in that beer that is more interesting than the company you’re with?”

I jerked and looked at Jannie. Her lovely long lashes seemed to push her perfume my way each time she blinked. I realized I had been staring into my beer. I was struggling to come up with an explanation for my behavior when our reservation buzzer went off.

I really couldn’t explain my behavior. It was as if I had missed a stair step and had gotten thrown off balance and every step after that had been messed up because of it and it was all I could do to avoid ending up in a heap at the bottom.

“I’m sorry, Jannie. Something at work has got me buffaloed. It’s been an off day.” I looked at her. “I’m happy to be with you though. I think things are going to be better this afternoon.”

“I know something that would improve your disposition.”

“What would that be?”

We sat down at our table. She rubbed her feet against mine. She tapped out our code word for sex with the toe of her shoe. I grinned like a movie theater curtain going up.

“That would do it all right.”

It had been too far to drive back to the house, so we had taken a hotel room like two college kids in heat. I had ridden her luscious lips until my knees cramped. She had then taken her turn while my legs sent needles up to my brain.

I was drained. Why did I want to disrupt all of this by wanting to sniff Chastity’s cunt? I wasn’t crazy the last time I checked, but I could have gone over the edge since then. I didn’t know.

I didn’t get a chance to shower so I felt like I was broadcasting ‘I’ve been fucked, and I’d like to do it again’ messages all day. I did get some interesting looks though.

Against my better judgment I stopped in at the Rod and Gun after work. I wanted to see if everything was back to normal between Chastity and me. I knew that whatever I had seen was most likely coming from inside my own head, but I never could leave well enough alone.

Charlie had said as much one time.

“It’s going to be the death of you, Cake. You’re going to probe one spot too many and a damned land mine is going to blow your ass away. You’ll be one step away from safety and you’ll notice an odd little tuft of grass and that tuft of grass is going cancel your ticket and turn your lights out.”

Charlie had a way with metaphors.

“I know you’re right, Charlie, but what am I going to do? I can’t change my wiring.”

“Really? What if you had to do something that you feel is totally wrong, but you have to do it in order to save the ones you love? Would you not do it because of your ‘wiring’?”

“I don’t know, Charlie. I hope I never have to make that decision. Ever.”

She nodded. “Yeah. Once is all it takes, and your world is changed forever.”

I knew she spoke from experience, but I didn’t press her on it that day. I should have because I never found out.

Chastity’s shoulders dropped a little as she put my drink in front of me. I did a quick check of her eyes, but they didn’t give away anything.

“Thanks.” I looked around. “Pretty busy. They must be running you ragged.”

She brushed the back of her hand across her forehead.

“Yeah. I don’t usually see you in this time of day. Is everything all right?”

“Everything is fine.”

Somebody called her name, so I was spared any further exposition. She nodded at me and headed off to see who was calling. It seemed clear that this morning’s conversation was a distant memory to her, so I drank my beer in peace and watched her as she ran the bar. One moment she would be talking to someone at the bar and the next minute she would be pointing out something to Cully. I wondered how where she found the energy to run this place.

She looked my way one time and I pretended that I was looking at something behind her. I don’t know if it worked or not. She finally came over to me.

“Another beer?”

“No thanks. I’d better be getting home.”

She took my money and brought back some loose bills. I put them in the tip jar.

“Is everything all right between you and Janelle? If it’s not my business, then I’ll understand. It’s just that you’ve been tracking me ever since you came in, so I figured something was weighing on your mind that you wanted to talk about. I figured it might have something to do with Janelle.”

I hoped I had hidden the rising horror in me and the subsequent relief that she had jumped to the wrong conclusion.

“Jannie and I are good. We took a room after lunch and spent some sexy-time together.”

Chastity smiled.

“Good.”

“Yeah, sorry about that. I guess I was lost in thought and kind of tracked anything that moved. That behavior saved my bacon a few times back then.” By back then I of course meant the war.

“I suppose so. You never really lose that training, do you?”

“Right. You try to channel it into something productive.”

“You were Marines, right?”

“Right.”

“I bet you looked cute in a buzz cut.”

I tossed and turned that night until it woke Jannie up.

“Can’t sleep?” Her voice with thick.

“Yeah. I left the link to Hong Kong on. I need go in and shut it off.” Liar. Liar.

“Why?”

“It will cost a fortune in telecom charges.” I glanced at the clock. “It won’t be bad if I catch it now.”

“Okay then.”

She turned on her side and pulled the covers over her.

“I’ll try not to wake you when I come back.”

“Thanks.”

I leaned over and pecked her on the cheek and got out of bed. My body couldn’t be bathed in more adrenaline if I were being marched out naked to a firing squad. My hands shook as I got dressed. Was I really going to do what I was planning to do?

Apparently so. I let myself out of the house and reset the alarm. I rested my head on the steering wheel for a few seconds before I started the car and pulled out of the driveway.

I pulled into the Rod and Gun lot about twenty minutes later. The lot was empty of cars. I figured Chastity’s was around back. The lights were still on. I had turned my lights off about a quarter of a mile back and I parked near the street. I didn’t want anybody to hear me. I didn’t want anybody to know I was here. I didn’t want to think about how much shit I would be in if anybody saw me.

I found a place with a good view. Chastity and Cully were cleaning up. It looked like they were about done. Finally, Chastity was standing behind the bar looking at some papers. Cully walked up behind her and slid his arms around her waist and then up onto her bowling ball breasts. I gasped and almost pissed in my pants waiting from them to look up and at me.

Heedless of my presence Chastity covered his hands with hers and leaned her head back and positioned her lips so that she could kiss him. Well, question answered, I guess. You had to have a cock to get into Chastity’s manicured bungalow.

As quietly as I could I backed away from the building. When I got far enough away, I turned around and walked swiftly to my car.

I got in and rested my head against the steering wheel. I knew that I needed to get out of there, but I was unable to move. Now that I had my proof that Chastity and I would never be an item the realization welled up in me that I wanted her more than I had ever imagined.

I wanted to feel her hands and lips all over me I wanted to push my face between her mammoth breasts and drink in her feral aroma. I wanted to—

A car horn tore through my fantasy.

I straightened up in my seat like a flagpole had been shoved up my ass. I looked out the driver’s window right into Chastity’s concerned face. She had pulled her car up next to mine while I had been too focused on mentally fucking her to notice.

There was nothing I could do but roll down my window.

“Cake? Is that you?”

“Hey, Chastity. Nice night.”

My pants felt wet. I hoped it was from the warmth of the night.

“So why are you sitting out her in the darkness?”

I had lied to Jannie to come here so it only seemed fair to lie to Chastity about why I was here.

“Jannie and I had a fight. I needed to get out for a while. I didn’t notice where I was going. I guess I ended up here. I thought maybe a drink would help.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. The bar is closed though. I’m sorry.”

“That’s okay. I—“

“You can come over to my place if you like. I’m sure I’ve got something there you’ll like.”

My jaw almost hit the open window. That would have sounded like a proposition to me if I hadn’t seen her with Cully in the bar.

“Sure,” I said.

My tongue must have swollen to fill my mouth because I was barely able to get the word out. I followed her to her house. She lived in a suburb near mine. She lived in Greenbriar while I lived in Great Plains. The layouts were similar. I pulled into the driveway behind her and caught up with her as she opened the door. She waved me in and closed the door behind her.

I started to have an out of body experience. I couldn’t believe I was in Chastity’s living room. My body seemed to be a few seconds behind my mind as it tried to cram all the details of her house at warp speed. Chastity walked to a bar.

“I’ve got some beer here but it’s not your brand. Would you like to try it, or would you like something from the bar?”

“Let’s keep it simple. Give me a couple of shots of Beam.” I had noticed that she had a bottle of it on the shelf.

She went into the kitchen came back with some ice. I heard the ice drop into the glass then I heard it crack as the whiskey surrounded it.

“Thanks,” I said. The glass was cool in my hand.

“I think I’ll have one of those myself. It’s straight and to the point. Like you.” She turned around with the drink in her hand. “Sit down wherever you like.”

I picked a section of a large sofa. Chastity flopped down into a chair across the coffee table.

“Man, I’m beat. Running that bar is a bitch.”

“I’ll bet. Say, I’m probably intruding on your quiet time. Maybe I should go.”

She held out a hand.

“Nothing doing. I’m fine now that I’m off my feet. You don’t do foot massage do you?”

“I’ve never had any training but Jannie has never complained.”

Chastity leaned back in her chair and spread her feet apart. Her jeans were tight. I could see her vulva outlined like the Grand Canyon in the denim. I looked away quickly.

“Yeah, Janelle. You two had a fight. I’m sorry to hear about it, but I can’t say that I’m surprised.”

“Not surprised? Why not?” Were my feelings for her so transparent?

“Word around the bar is that she’s been seen in the company of Margery Dawson.”

“That’s not unusual. Jannie works in the same office as Margery. It’s only natural they’d go to lunch together and stuff.”

Chastity got up.

“I need a refill. How about you?”

I started to say no until I looked at my glass and saw only ice staring back at me.

“Yeah. I guess so.”

She came around to get my glass. The tops of her breasts rolled around in front of me like synchronized pendulums for a few seconds. I thought my eyes were going to burn out. I had forgotten to blink. Chastity spent a few minutes at the bar and brought me my refill. Instead of going back to her chair she kicked off her shoes and sat on the sofa and swung her feet around and plopped them on my lap.

“I’ve decided to take you up on the foot massage. She produced a moist cloth that I hadn’t noticed and handed it to me. “You can wash your hands with this afterward.”

“Thanks.” I took it and put it on the coffee table. She had on some low-cut socks. I pulled them off and resisted the urge to smell them.

“Your toenails are very pretty.”

“Thanks. I like to put special colors on them for special people to see.”

“So, am I special?”

“I’m sorry. I did them for somebody else. I didn’t expect to be exposing my toes to you tonight.”

“That’s okay. I’ll take a rain check.”

“Sure.”

I looked at her, but her face was unreadable. She had swallowed about half of her drink and then lowered herself onto the couch. Her head rested on one of the arms. Her eyes were closed. I began working on her feet. I started with the ball of her left foot.

“Damn that feels good. I’ve made up my mind that I’m bringing you home with me every night.”

“Won’t Cully object?”

Her eyes opened for a few seconds then closed again. I worried that I had fucked up the moment. She sighed.

“Cully is hardworking, dependable, and he can get more money elsewhere so yeah, I sleep with him. It’s something of an open secret with the regulars. They don’t know it’s a business decision.”

“I didn’t know.” How many more lies would I tell tonight?

“That’s to your credit.”

She worked her free foot under my leg.

“There. My toes were getting cold.” She opened her eyes. “In case you’re wondering I am not softening you up for sex. Just in case you were thinking of trying something to get even with Jannie.”

“Good. I don’t want our relationship to get sexual. It would ruin it. Anyway, I would never have sex with you to get even with Jannie.”

“Damn straight.”

Who was I kidding? I’m pretty sure my underwear was soaked. I hoped it didn’t leak onto the couch. I fought a sudden urge to stand up and check.

“So how long do I have with Jannie? How good is this information you have?”

“It’s pretty solid. I’ve—“The ringing doorbell cut her off. “Who could that be?”

“Cully?”

“Tonight’s not his night, otherwise I wouldn’t have stopped to talk to you.”

She got up and went to the door. Her eyes widened and she let out a small gasp when she saw who it was.

“Who is it?”

She stepped back and Jannie walked into the room. I felt like someone had jammed a boot in my stomach.

“So, did you get that connection shutdown?”

“How did you know I was here?” I glanced at Chastity and hated myself for it. “Did someone call you?”

“I followed your pathetic ass over here. I watched you at the bar and I waited outside to give you two time to get naked. I guess I was in too much of a hurry.” She glanced at Chastity. “Or Chastity has too much good taste to put her lips on a shriveled fruit like you.”

“I didn’t bring her over here to have sex. She said you two had a fight. I was trying to comfort her.” Chastity turned to me. “You said you two had a fight. That’s the only reason I told you about, you know.”

“She told me she had to shut down some connection to Hong Kong. It sounded suspicious. I waited until she left and caught up with her within a couple of blocks. She never noticed a thing.” She looked at Chastity. “She must have been too busy imagining your tongue in her cunt.”

Chastity looked at me.

“You came to the bar to see me? What did you hope to accomplish? After all this time why pick now to make your move?”

“I was happy with Jannie. You were mostly a fantasy of mine. I knew nothing would ever come of it. I didn’t even know for sure if you were gay.”

“I must have said something today that fanned some embers.”

“It wasn’t anything you said. It was something I said.”

“At least you’re not blaming me for this fuckup.”

“I’m not blaming you for anything.” I turned to Jannie. “We had sex this afternoon. You instigated it, and all this time you were having an affair with Margery. Why?”

“Why? Because you’re boring. The older you got the more boring you got. I did the math. When you said you were taking me to lunch you went to the damn buffet. Your name is the only interesting thing about you. I’m not getting any younger. Margery and I have plans and you’ve just made it easier for me to say yes to her.”

She turned and walked out the still open door. I stared at it.

“I think you’d better leave. I don’t take kindly to being lied to.”

My head snapped in Chastity’s direction. Heat rose in me and I was going to breathe fire on her but when I saw her face, I couldn’t say anything hurtful.

“Yes, of course. I understand. I’m sorry.”

I picked up my glass and drained it. I handed it to Chastity and walked to the door. The door slammed behind me. I tried to gauge Chastity’s feelings by judging how violently she had closed the door then I realized how stupid that was. I got in my car and started driving.

I thought about looking for a motel but then the heat really did rise in me.

That fucking bitch isn’t going to break off our relationship and then expect me to sleep in a motel. I’m going to sleep in my own bed.

I headed home. I didn’t realize how tense I was until I pulled into my driveway and saw that Jannie’s car wasn’t there. From the intake of breath, I was pretty sure that I hadn’t taken a breath at all on the way home. How could the day had gone to shit so fast? Had it all been my fault?

I rolled the question around in my head while I opened a beer. No, all I had managed to do today was cause something that was already in motion to be exposed earlier than planned. All I had done was cause a good relationship with Chastity to be flushed down the toilet.

That had been my fault. Definitely my fault. Jannie’s mind had already been out the door even if her body had hung around in my house and in my bed. Well, there we other cows in the barn.

Who am I kidding? I’m forty, I don’t have kids, and I’m going to die in a nursing home all alone.

I cocked my arm. It was my plan to throw the beer at the television set, but I stopped because the television set was a damned flat screen, and all the beer would do is knock it over and probably destroy a few pixels in the middle. Televisions used to implode noisily and would be totally useless afterward.

“Damn you, modern technology. You’re no fun anymore.”

I put the bottle to my lips and didn’t take it away until it was empty. I threw the bottle in the trash (because they don’t fucking recycle glass anymore) and got another one from the refrigerator. If I couldn’t destroy a television set, then plan B was for me to get drunk out of my fucking mind.

I woke up with a full bottle of beer sitting on my stomach, my hand loosely wrapped around it. Light had moved far enough into the room that it could shine into my eyes. As soon as I adjusted my position to remedy this the bottle rolled onto the floor and started emptying itself onto the carpet.

“Fucking bottle. Whose side are you on anyway?”

By the time I had stopped the flow my pants were soaked, and a circle of wetness was spreading from the point of impact on the carpet. I got up and staggered to the kitchen to get some paper towels then I staggered back and blotted the carpet with them. I left a couple of them on the floor to mark the spot then went to the bedroom and stripped off my pants and underwear.

This was the second time in the last few hours that my underwear had been soaked. The first time had been from my own lubrication and the second time had been from warm beer.

My own lubrication? What was I, some kind of fucking machine? Go ahead and fuck me. I’m self-lubricating. Hell, why didn’t women come equipped with a conveyor belt or some similar shit as well, so their partners didn’t have to do anything?

Yeah, I was a fucking machine all right. I’d fuck anything with a fucking cunt and a nice fucking pair of tits. Maybe that should be a nice pair of fucking tits. I didn’t know. My head hurt too much. I opened the vanity drawers until I found some pain reliever and shook a few of them into my hand.

How much was a dosage? I didn’t care. Maybe I would take too many and never wake up. That would be a plus. I put four of them in my mouth and chased them with some vile tasting water. I staggered to the bed and collapsed on it. I managed to send a message to my manager saying that I was taking a sick day before passing out again. How I managed to do all of that without throwing up is still a mystery to me.

The sun, heedless of my desire for oblivion, continued to climb higher in the sky. Drool ran from my mouth. I hadn’t managed to take my shirt off so I was chafing from the waist up and cooler than I would like from the waist down, yet I didn’t want to move.

I heard a knock on the door. I figured if I ignored it that it would go away. It did. Except that it didn’t. The knocking was replaced by a different sound. It sounded a bit like feet. It sounded like feet walking on my carpet. Maybe it was someone from Raymond Funeral Home coming to collect my body.

The steps grew louder, and I began to try to form a plan for getting up. I was still in the preplanning stage when Chastity walked in and sat down in the chair by my bed. She had a fancy looking cup of coffee in her hand.

“Nice ass,” she said. “And prominently displayed so that anyone coming into the room would see it there front and center on the bed. Were you going to put an open house sign on it but forgot?”

“Nice rack.” I figured I couldn’t dig myself any deeper if I came and said what I thought.

“The Lord did bless me with quantity rather than quality in the physical department.”

I tried to sit up, but my head kept threatening to fall off, so I quit.

“How did you get in? Hell, how did you find out where I lived?”

“The door was open. I’m guessing somebody was too angry last night to sweat the little things. As for how I found out where you lived, well that wasn’t too hard. I run a bar after all. They still have phone books. For some reason you still have a land line.”

My mouth was dry. I wanted to ask about the coffee she was holding but I didn’t want to risk breaking whatever mood this was.

“Very good. Now for a tougher question. Why are you here?”

She nodded.

“I figured you’d get to that one eventually. I guess I’m here because you are boring.”

“Boring? But that’s why Jannie dumped me.”

She shrugged.

“I’d say that Janelle and I have different ideas of what constitutes a good partner. Take me for example. I run a bar and there’s always a high energy level there. When I come home, perhaps I don’t want the same energy level. Stay with me now. Perhaps I want to knock back a few shots and have my feet massaged. Maybe I want to watch a television show or stream a movie. Hell, I might want to talk about the Arts, or current events, or about how this country is going to hell.”

“That sounds like a nice life.”

She leaned over and handed me the coffee. I managed to prop myself up and took a grateful sip.

“It does, doesn’t it. Would you share it with me?”

“What? Let me rephrase that. What about Cully?”

“It’s business, Cake. I can’t shut him off.”

“Maybe I could quit my job and help you and you wouldn’t need him.”

She smiled.

“Maybe so. I’d like that, but first things first. I’ll check back tonight for your answer.”

“Don’t bother. I’ll answer you right now. The answer is not only yes but hell yes.”

She leaned forward and stroked my sweaty hair before kissing my cheek.

“Thanks, Cake. I have to get back to work. When you feel human again come on by and we’ll make plans.”

“Yeah. Give me about six hours.”

“Okay. I’ll see you then.”

She got up and left. I managed to roll over on my back, and I stared at the ceiling with a big grin on my face for quite a long time.


End file.
